Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts eBook

He nodded, and led the way over the copper floor,
where the water ran high as our ankles and again was
drained off, until little dry spaces grew like maps
upon the surface, and in ten seconds were flooded again.
He led me straight to the cages, and I saw that while
the roof and three sides of these were of sheet iron,
the fourth side, which faced the throne, lay open.
And I saw—­in the first cage, a man scourged
with rods; in the second, a body twisted on the rack;
in the third, a woman with a starving babe, and a
fellow that held food to them and withdrew it quickly
(the torturers wore masks on their faces, and whenever
blood flowed some threw handfuls of sawdust, and blood
and sawdust together were carried off by the running
water); in the fourth cage, a man tied, naked and
helpless, whom a masked torturer pelted with discs
of gold, heavy and keen-edged; in the fifth a brasier
with irons heating, and a girl’s body crouched
in a corner—­

“I will see no more!” I cried, and turned
towards the great purple canopy. High over it
the sun broke yellow on the climbing tiers of seats.
“Harry! someone is watching behind those curtains!
Is it—­HE?”

Harry bent his head.

“But this is all that I believed! This
is Nero, and ten times worse than Nero! Why
did you bring me here?” I flung out my hand
towards the purple throne, and finding myself close
to a fellow who scattered sawdust with both hands,
made a spring to tear his mask away. But Harry
stretched out an arm.

“That will not help you,” he said.
“The man has no face.”

“No face!”

“He once had a face, but it has perished.
His was the face of these sufferers. Look at
them.”

I looked from cage to cage, and now saw that indeed
all these sufferers—­men and women—­had
but one face: the same wrung brow, the same wistful
eyes, the same lips bitten in anguish. I knew
the face. We all know it.

“His own Son! O devil rather than God!”
I fell on my knees in the gushing water and covered
my eyes.

“Stand up, listen and look!” said Harry’s
voice.

“What can I see? He hides behind that
curtain.”

“And the curtain?”

“It shakes continually.”

“That is with His sobs. Listen!
What of the water?”

“It runs from the throne and about the floor.
It washes off the blood.”

“That water is His tears. It flows hence
down the hill, and washes all the shores of earth.”

Then as I stood silent, conning the eddies at my feet,
for the first time Harry took my hand.

“Learn this,” he said. “There
is no suffering in the world but ultimately comes
to be endured by God.”

Saying this, he drew me from the spot; gently, very
gently led me away; but spoke again as we were about
to pass into the shadow of the arch—­

“Look once back: for a moment only.”

I looked. The curtains of the imperial seat
were still drawn close, but in a flash I saw the tiers
beside it, and around, and away up to the sunlit crown
of the amphitheatre, thronged with forms in white raiment.
And all these forms leaned forward and bowed their
faces on their arms and wept.